Today's Opinions

There is a special primary election scheduled for Sept. 15. This is a very important and critical election for District 2. I’m asking residents of District 2 to vote for my mother, Charlene McGriff. I’m very proud to say that she is my role model. Usually you will hear parents talk about how proud they are of their children, but I must say I am overjoyed and honored to see the accomplishments that my mother has made throughout the years.

Recently there have been several letters to the editor complaining that County Council has misplaced priorities or has failed to address certain road maintenance issues.

As county administrator, I readily admit that county operations are run by humans and therefore we are not perfect. Complaints and suggestions for improvement are welcome, but we do ask that they be based on fact and several recent letters were simply not factual.

Passion, energy, experience. Those are words that come to our mind when we think of the three women who are now leading See Lancaster, the organization that promotes tourism in Lancaster County.

See Lancaster was reorganized this summer after some deliberations between a special task force and Lancaster City Council. The new See Lancaster still has a mission of promoting tourism in the county, but it also heads up the Performing Arts Series at the University of South Carolina.

I would like to thank the citizens of Lancaster County for ensuring Preston Blackmon’s legacy lives on through the Preston Blackmon Family Success and Career Center. Your efforts in making the center a success reciprocates the love that Preston had for each one of you.

A special thanks to the Revs. George and Stella Williams, Deliverance Word of Faith Church family, Southside Adult Family Literacy Project and Southside Literacy Board for reflecting upon Preston’s life and naming the center in the honor.

The founding principle of our nation is that we are a free people – a nation that has a government, not the other way around, as President Ronald Reagan put it.

To that end, our founders created the most amazing experiment ever in the course of human history, articulated by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Both of these documents established how we arrange our affairs in this nation so as to create maximum individual liberty in an ordered society: not anarchy, not tyranny, but the best balance between the two. In short, ordered liberty.

I understand the sentiment of those who are calling us to say that they do not want their medical care delivered from Washington. But I also understand that 50 percent of all health care in this country is either paid for or provided through the federal government. That includes Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Tricare Standard, Tricare for Life, Veterans Health Care, Military Health Care, Indian Health Care, the Public Health Service, and the Federal Employees Benefit Program.